THE KILLING FIELDS: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE S-21 DEATH CAMP - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Limited Edition

Chandler, David; Niven, Douglas; Riley, Chris (Editors/Authors) & Woody, Jack (Designer/Publisher)

ISBN 10: 094409239X / ISBN 13: 9780944092392

Published by Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 1996, 1996

About this Item

1st Printing. 124 pages. Published in 1996. Retrospective collection of photographs. One of the greatest photography books of the 20th century. The First Limited Edition of 3000 copies. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The Limited Edition is now rare. An austerely beautiful production by Jack Woody: Oversize-volume format. The book weighs 3 pounds. Dark brown cloth boards with black plate in the recessed center and black titles embossed on the spine, as issued. Photographs by anonymous members of the Khmer Rouge. Edited by Chris Riley and Douglas Niven. Essay by David Chandler. In publisher's original plastic wrappers. Printed in gravure on pristine-white, thick uncoated stock paper by Nissha Printing Company in Kyoto, Japan to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents "The Killing Fields". The portrait gallery of genocide. The only such photography book published in our time: Boys, girls, men, women, and old people, who were photographed, many of them wearing their ID numbers (Number 1 being a very young boy), as they were checked into Tuol Sleng Prison. There, their unimaginable suffering proved, if proof were needed, that while heaven is often merely a fantasy, hell is for real, a parallel universe to ordinary life on Planet Earth. Shackled, interrogated, starved, tortured, and driven mad before being executed by the Khmer Rouge, the subjects in "The Killing Fields" literally and symbolically represent their 200, 000 fellow human beings who were "processed" at various torture centers, of which Tuol Sleng, code-named S-21, was the most notorious. Pol Pot murdered as many as 1.7 million of his people, more than half the entire Cambodian population, during his Reign of Terror between 1975 and 1979, in order to realize the creation of the ideal agrarian society. He ordered the killings in a systematic fashion, the logic behind them beyond sadistic, vengeful, or paranoid (although it was all of these as well). It was utopia become barbarism, a utopia that was thought out by Saloth Sar, the real name of Pol Pot, for his graduate-degree thesis at the University of Paris. Saloth Sar concluded that everyone, even a committed Marxist, could become a "microbe", which had no place in society if there was the slightest doubt about its "purity". Anyone who was "impure" (as all human beings are) needed to be "disinfected", that is, killed. "It is better to kill you by mistake than to keep you alive by mistake" (Pol Pot). An absolute "must-have" title for photography book collectors. This is a copy of the First Limited Edition of 3000 copies. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the Limited Edition still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare copy thus. 100 gravure plates. "The Killing Fields" was selected as the Best Photography Book of the Year by the International Center for Photography (ICP) in 1996. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO BILL BURKE "I WANT TO TAKE PICTURE" TITLE IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 094409239X. Seller Inventory # 13722

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE KILLING FIELDS: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE S-...

Publisher: Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 1996

Publication Date: 1996

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: no

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Between 1975 and 1978, the Khmer Rouge brutally executed two hundred thousand Cambodians suspected of crimes against Pol Pot's regime. This book is a grim yet fascinating collection of Khmer Rouge photographs of prisoners as they were checked in to the S-21 death camp. Harrowed by interrogation and often, torture, these faces betray their fate--forcing the viewer to reckon with the circumstances that ever allowed these atrocities to occur. A powerful, important book.

Review:

The Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of Cambodian citizens--conservative estimates are as high as 200,000--during their brief reign between 1975 and 1979. The Killing Fields is a haunting collection of black-and-white photographs taken at Tuol Sleng, a schoolhouse-turned-prison in which some 14,000 prisoners were tortured and executed for reasons nebulously classified as "crimes against the state." Perhaps appropriately, no names or details are included, only stark images of terror, confusion, and pain. Ranging from young children to the elderly, the 78 victims portrayed in The Killing Fields visually represent the horrors suffered at Tuol Sleng--some bear markings of beatings and others are crying, but all seem aware of what awaits them. Why the Khmer Rouge chose to document such atrocities is unknown, but--unlike the victims of their intolerance--the photographs of the Khmer Rouge survive to remind us of the violence that overtook them. Following the snapshots is an essay by Cambodia scholar David Chandler and a chilling firsthand account by Vann Nath, one of only seven prisoners to survive the Tuol Sleng prison.